


Make Him Die, Let Him Live

by clockworkowenge



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Canon Related, Don't Examine This Too Closely, Emotional Baggage, F/M, Grief/Mourning, Hatred, I Wrote This Instead of Sleeping, Internal Monologue, Jon Snow Deserves Better, POV Catelyn Tully Stark
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-17
Updated: 2021-03-17
Packaged: 2021-03-25 23:42:24
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,240
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30096966
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/clockworkowenge/pseuds/clockworkowenge
Summary: Catelyn of House Tully, Lady of Winterfell, has a secret. She had allowed everyone to believe her hatred of Jon Snow was due to the circumstances surrounding his birth. This was not the case. She didn't see evidence of a Southern whore in the eyes of her husband's bastard son. The eyes that looked back at her were his; her first love, her Brandon.How could she not hate him when all he served to do was remind her of a future she'd dreamt of but could never have?
Relationships: Brandon Stark/Catelyn Tully Stark, Catelyn Tully Stark & Ned Stark, Jon Snow & Catelyn Tully Stark
Kudos: 9





	Make Him Die, Let Him Live

Catelyn of House Tully had never been a woman to mince words or censor herself in times of distress before Eddard Stark had entered her life. She was brassy and bolshy as a young woman, much to the amusement of her sister, Lysa, and the chagrin of her Lord and Lady parents. Still, she had owned her less than favourable traits, finding comfort in the kind grey eyes of the man that had been her intended; Brandon Stark. Eddard was his younger brother, next in line to Lordship behind Brandon until the elder produced heirs. Catelyn had wanted nothing more than to be Lady Stark and mother of the next heir to Winterfell, her love for an honourable man being much stronger than her Southern body's hatred for the cold of the North. 

She saw her future with her lover so clearly in her mind back then, excited for the next chapter of their story; the next verse in their great ballad. That future was perfect, filled with laughter and love and the pattering of tiny feet on the stone floors of the Northern castle keep. However, that was not the future that the Seven intended for Catelyn Tully. She would still be Lady Stark and she would still be the mother to the heir of Winterfell but there would be little prompt for laughter to leave her lips in the coming years and no true love besides that she held for her children. Brandon Stark was dead and gone and Eddard was all that remained for her.

Over the years, the maiden of the Vale had grown accustomed to the new life she led but her heart grew as cold as the Northern weather with each passing day. The only hearth she found to warm her frozen soul was found in her babes, who prompted fleeting smiles and rare chuckles from her when nobody else was around to witness them. Eddard was brave and true, honourable to a fault in a similar way to his brother, but he would never take the place of Brandon in her heart the way he had as Lord of Winterfell. He knew it too.

She had often wondered if it was that certain knowledge that she would never truly love him that had led Eddard to stray from their marital vows and lay with another on his trip to the South. Of course, she couldn't blame him. How could she ever do so when she was feeling just as trapped as he? That didnt stop the bitterness creeping in though, when she was reminded that her husband was free to stray from their marital bed with no repercussions yet she was trapped without escape in a loveless marriage, never free to stray out of fear of being declared a ruined whore.

When Eddard had returned north with a whimpering bundle tucked into the crook of his arm, the Lady Stark had been horrified. The injustice of her husband's freedom to create a life with another woman just another nail in the coffin, mocking her with what she could never have; a child of her own born from passion rather than duty. It was cruel of him to burden her with such a reminder, forcing her to watch as his natural born child grew alongside their shared heirs. Not as cruel as the Gods were though, to torment her by moulding Jon Snow in the image of her dead love. Every day that passed, more of Brandon's features crept into Jon's face until it physically pained her to look at him.

In her darkest moment, Catelyn found herself by the child's bedside while he slept, fighting a mighty fever that had him wheezing and whimpering fitfully through his unconsciousness, weaving thread and twine and praying for the Seven to extinguish the torturous reminder of her lost love. When the fever grew and the telltale signs of pox appeared over Jon's pale skin within the week, the Lady Stark was unable to fight off the memories of a similar fever that had dug deep into Brandon's bones thanks to the infected wounds he had gained on the battlefield during Robert Baratheon's rebellion against the Targaryen dynasty, her grief was born anew as she realised what she had done. This child had been innocent, just as Brandon had been innocent. She had thought Jon a curse from the Gods but the reality was that the fever was the curse and the babe was the blessing. A gift from the Mother, Brandon reborn and returned to her in a new form. Maybe she was meant to love him, a reward for her dutiful action to marry the brother of her deceased lover despite how much it killed her inside to turn her back on the future she had dreamed of. The punishment for her ungrateful dismissal of such a gift was to bear witness to the same death grip the child duplicate of her beloved.

There was nothing for Catelyn to do but fall to her knees and pray again once she had realised her blasphemy; how she had insulted the Mother by rejecting her gift. She prayed for Jon's life, beseeching the Seven and promising to love this motherless child as she did her own brood and to convince her husband to legitimise the boy and make him a Stark in name and pedigree. He was her gift, her little piece of the love she had lost and she knew that she must right this wrong that she had willed into being. By divine mercy, her prayers were answered and her promises solidified as Jon's fever finally broke in the next few days. Catelyn sat by his bedside day and night, holding damp cloth to his forehead and brushing her fingers through his raven-black curls.

She had almost convinced herself she could be the mother he needed her to be. That she could pour her love for Brandon into her love for the small boy who could have been her love reincarnated. It wasn't to be, however, for it was all too much for her tattered and broken heart. She didn't have access to that love that she had once had, the love she had for her children proving not enough to share with her husband's son. All hope of that type of selfless love had died along with Brandon and only the pain of his absence remained, tainting her very soul with burning cold ice that lay waste to the embers of warmth that might once have allowed Jon into her heart. She attempted to ask Eddard about legitimising his natural son, her devotion to the Seven driving her despite her lack of feeling, but her throat closed around the words so tightly in refusal that the question was strangled and killed over and over agian until she finally gave up trying.

Jon could never be a Stark; not to her or anyone else. Having the child bear one more similarity to Brandon would be too much for her to handle. It would surely kill her. No. Jon Snow was born a bastard, he would remain that way and Catelyn of House Tully, Lady Stark of Winterfell, would hate him until her last breath. For, as long as he looked her way with those stolen eyes as those tendrils of pilfered ebony curls cascaded over that counterfeit face, what else could she possibly give him?


End file.
